In this collection I have included some of the poems written in the last three or four years, a period in which I have been busy working on novels and translations, and making frequent trips to China. That's how the collection comes, in three parts. The poems in the first part, Lines out of China, were written in the United States. As for the second part, Lines in China, I wrote some during my trips there and rewrote in English, some I had written years earlier in Chinese. The third part, Cathay Revisited, resulted from my dialogue with classical Chinese poets in the translation of their works.